On the Self-Entitlement of Yale’s Faculty

Whereas the emails that Larry Summers sent to the disgraced underage-sex-ring boss, Jeffrey Epstein, did not—at least to my knowledge—involve Summers’ role as a professor at Harvard, Yale’s David Gelernter, who had been wounded in 1993 by a mail-explosive that had been sent by the “Unabomber,”—an event that I remember in person as I was a Yale student back then—wrote not only on topics such as business and art, but also to recommend a hot female student to work as an editor for Epstein. Specifically, Gelernter had a Yale senior in mind—a student he described in the email as a “v small good-looking blonde.”[1] Whereas Larry Summers apologized publicly (and to his class) in late 2025 for his bad judgment in having continued to exchange emails with Epstein even after the latter’s conviction, Gelernter saw nothing to apologize for in spite of the fact that the flagged email pertained to his role as a professor (in recommending a student). He was actually proud of the email that he had sent as a professor concerning a student to the sex-predator! The sheer brazenness of Gelernter’s self-defense reveals something about the privileged mentality of Yale’s faculty—a mentality that is not good for academia or Yale.

Defending his email in a message to Dean Brock of Yale’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, Gelernter “noted that Epstein was ‘obsessed with girls’—‘like every other unmarried billionaire in Manhattan; in fact, like every other heterosex male’—and he was keeping ‘the potential boss’s habits in mind.’”[2] Epstein’s “habits” notoriously included sex with underage girls, and making them available to other adult, heterosex adult men. Gelernter concluded his argument with, “So long as I said nothing that dishonored her in any conceivable way, I’d have told him more or less what he wanted. She was smart, charming & gorgeous. Ought I to have suppressed that info? Never! I’m very glad I wrote the note.”[3] That referring to the student’s physical appearance can be considered to be dishonoring her, especially as the reference was made to a man operating an underage sex-ring for adult men, is a point that any reasonable person would at least acknowledge. Gelernter’s blind-spot may have been cultured and maintained by a very arrogant, self-entitled faculty-culture at Yale that would make a country-club mentality seem tame.

Besides Gelernter’s continued bad judgment—which makes Harvard’s Summers look good in comparison—Gelernter’s brazen defense to his dean may point to or reveal a cloistered and privileged world in which Yale faculty inhabit. As another data-point, not a few alumni who return to campus to take advantage of the perk of being able to audit Yale courses have reported (at least to one party in the Yale Political Union) that professors have been very rude in rebuffing such alumni seeking to gain more knowledge. This should be applauded and encouraged, but too many Yale faculty have the attitude that essentially says to alumni, “Your turn is over; it’s time for the current students.” Even if admitted to audit a course, many alumni are relegated to nonspeaking roles—taking audire literally!—even as the readings are required even for alumni audits. That the young students could benefit greatly from the more worldly experience applied to the same reading material is strangely missed or dismissed by too many faculty members at Yale. In short, too many Yale professors refuse to view alumni as part of the Yale community. “You’re not an affiliate,” has been the common refrain not only by faculty, but also by their support/administrative employees whose affiliation at Yale is hardly academic.

One take-away is that Yale’s administration could have been doing more to coordinate its alumni policies with its faculty, but a deeper implication is that too many faculty members at Yale may hold themselves as laws unto themselves—above being obliged to heed university policies and being held accountable more generally. The arrogance that comes with stature is not uncommon at elite universities such as Yale, where even librarians and other support non-faculty easily assume airs of superiority not only over students, but also alumni.

For people outside of academia looking in, the the bad odor of arrogant professors can easily be associated with valuing knowledge even though arrogance works against learning. In short, Yale professors such as Gelernter give scholarship itself a bad name. Perhaps universities such as Yale could improve faculty-hiring processes to include the consideration of values, including humility, both intellectual and otherwise. The knowledge-game should be open-system rather than closed shop—inclusionary rather than exclusionary. Hiring scholars who are well-grounded more generally carries the benefit of having a faculty that is able to stay grounded with respect to having a realistic rather than a vaulted perspective. Physicians and lawyers tend to be well-grounded with respect to what is realistic and common sense in the sense of being helpful with respect to their clients; perhaps Yale professors could be better chosen by the university. Maybe its deans could be better chosen too.

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1. Dave Collins, “A Yale Professor Recommended a ‘Good-Looking Blonde’ Student for a Job with Epstein. He’s Not Sorry,” APnews.com, February 11, 2026.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

Centuries of Excluding Insiders at Yale

Jonathan Edwards fell out of favor with Yale’s president Clapp, who opposed George Whitefield’s Christian revivals as being too “enthusiastic.” So, Clapp had two pamphlets published to criticize Edwards, who had studied and then taught at Yale. In fact, one of Yale College’s residential colleges has been named after Edwards at least since the late twentieth century. I would imagine that few if any current or former JE students have been informed that Edwards ceased attending Yale Commencement exercises and even visiting campus once he had known of Clapp’s vitriolic pamphlets. It is ironic that in Edwards’s time, Yale’s faculty minimized the impact of original sin in what became known as the New Haven theology. It seems that compassion for people who hold a different theological (or political) view, as in “Love thy enemy,” was nonetheless above the grasp of Yale’s administration. Fast-forward from the first half of the eighteenth century to roughly three hundred years later and incredibly the same hostile, highly dysfunctional organizational culture was still well ensconced at Yale.

The full essay is at "Centuries of Excluding Insiders at Yale."

Yale Vipers

Even though it is sometimes difficult to "read between the lines" to assess whether or not people in an organization are welcoming or tacitly "showing you the door," the message is undoubtable and even palpable when "all the arrows are pointing in the same direction." In the case of Yale, where I have been an alumni scholar temporarily in residence during the 2023-2024 year, the university's administration could do its alumni a big favor by explicitly saying that we are not welcome back on campus, except to visit and of course donate money. Instead, passive aggression, unaccountability, and even unwarranted retaliation rule the roust there, in what is a toxic organizational culture. 

The full essay is at "Yale Vipers."

Yale's Original Sin

I take it as a matter of divine justice that redemption can elude a convenient, belated atonement, especially if the atoning individual or institution does not really grasp the root of the original sin and thus the sin continues under other manifestations even though admittedly they may be less severe. I contend that when Peter Salovey, Yale University’s president, apologized on behalf of the Yale Corporation for having oppressed two Black men nearly two centuries earlier, he was not aware of the university’s underlying exaggerated fixation on the insider/outsider dichotomy that was still salient in 2023. To be sure, Nietzsche wrote that the strong should maintain a pathos of distance from the weak, lest the latter beguile the former into voluntarily renouncing their innate strength. Kant distinguished intimacy from difference as together making up the dialectic of attraction and distance. When a customer with the strength of having money naturally distances oneself from a rude employee of a retail company who is resentful, such distance is hardly artificial. Yet when a university whose administrators and faculty feel the emotional need to distance themselves qua insiders from outsiders to such an extent that even alumni who return to campus to work on academic projects, such as writing a book, are relegated as outsiders—hence not “members of the community”—then the distancing stems from a rather unnatural pathology. I contend that such a pathology still plagued Yale like an invisible blanket in 2023, almost two-hundred years after that university had refused to allow two black auditors to speak in courses at Yale’s theological seminary (divinity school). That original sin, although atoned for, still ran through Yale’s puffed-up veins in 2023, hence intimacy and strength continued quite naturally to elude that university—the redemption of which would require more of a mirror than an apology to two dead Black auditors could provide. Although Yale appeared in 2023 to be self-confident to external stakeholders and the general public, Nietzsche’s advice applied to people considering coming or giving to Yale nonetheless: The strong should not get too close to weak, resentful birds of prey just as a healthy person should not go to a hospital lest such a person becomes sick too.

Yale was founded in 1701. More than 300 years later, in 2023, the university conferred honorary masters degrees on two Black men who could neither matriculate nor graduate when they came to the university’s theological seminary in 1834 and the 1840s, for it was illegal then for Black people from other states to attend college in New Haven. James Pennington and Alexander Crummell could only sit in on classes, but even in that marginal capacity, without being allowed to speak in class and check out library books—even those being discussed in the classes. In an 1851 lecture in Britain, published in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Pennington, an escaped slave, described his two years at Yale as his “visitorship” and catalogued the “oppression” he faced, including that he “could not get a book from the library.” Yale was not without blame, for the local law only forbid Pennington and Crummell from enrolling as students and graduating.

I contend that Yale’s administration was being petty in refusing to allow the non-students to speak in class and check out books from the library. I bet the seminary or university administrators told the two men that as a matter of policy, only students could speak in class and check out books. That Pennington had seen his father savagely whipped when both were slaves and Crummell’s father “was stolen from the neighborhood of Sierra Leone about the year 1780” were not matters that concerned Yale. Policies are policies. Rigidity is rigidity. Callousness is callousness. Arrogancc is arrogance. Library books were the property of Yale, and only paying students could check them out and participate in class. 

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century at Yale. Alumni could audit classes, and the university advertised it as of 2023, but, according to a Ph.D. student in the Graduate School, "faculty here generally don't like people auditing their courses." This sets up an implicit "bait and switch" dynamic, which is utterly unfair to alumni who return to Yale for a term to audit a class or two. Making matters worse, students in the Yale Political Union, of which I had been a member when I was a student, told me that alumni had complained about having been slapped with faculty rudeness when asking for permission to audit. I encountered that as well from several faculty members. A full professor in Yale's divinity school told me before the semester that her class, ironically in Christian Ethics, might be full; she would have to see when the class first met. So I did not go out of respect for her wishes, even though auditors don't count against enrollment caps (she had dismissed my point). When I went to her office the day after the first session, she harshly told me, "I'll have to reevaluate you sitting in because you didn't attend the first class." 

Another faculty member in Yale's divinity school told me that I could audit, but that I could not participate. That was enough for me to not audit her course. This "bug on the wall" approach to auditors was generally the case among Yale faculty. When I had audited courses elsewhere at other universities where I had studied or been a visiting scholar, the faculty had insisted that I participate to show that I doing the reading. Yale's culture of insisting on silence is thus counter-productive. Not only does it dismiss the perfectly valid expectation that auditors do the readings and contribute and thus add to the class, auditors, even if they are other scholars and could enhance discussion. In other words, the faculty culture is short-sighted. It's don't disturb us (ultimately by not auditing at all) rather than, If you're going to sit in, you'll need to take the course seriously by putting more effort into it than merely showing up. 

I had also written to a professor of ethics in Yale College (undergraduate liberal arts and sciences). In spite of the fact that I had had at least seven years of philosophy, which includes ethics, and had read most of that professor's book from which he would be teaching, he replied, "It would not be fair to the other students because you haven't taken the prerequisite course" for the undergraduate course on his book. Other students? A prerequisite in Intro to Ethics? It seems he was making a category mistake, as it had been 25 years since I had been a student at Yale. 

It is nice that Yale attended so well to its undergraduate students in liberal arts and sciences, as other research universities slight undergraduate education, being focused instead on getting research grants. Yet the insularity within the university and the related exclusion within Yale need not go along with investing in the undergraduate college experience. It is not as if undergraduate students are superior academically to graduate and professional students (though Yale had wanted to keep a closer watch on its divinity school in the late 1990s because of the lax admission standards). 

The residential colleges on Yale's campus (two more had been added since I had been a student) physically evince the inner-insularity, which is Yale's original (and on-going) sin. They host afternoon talks periodically, which are officially open to the Yale community, which includes alumni and students in the professional schools, but the gates of each college were locked even on days when class was in session, so not even graduate students could get in to attend the talks. In 2023, I was going to attend Howard Dean's talk at Branford College, one of the residential colleges of Yale College; I had even mentioned that I would be coming to the Head of that college, but when the time came, the gates were locked and I stood frustrated for twenty minutes before I gave up and walked away, vowing that I would not try to attend any other talk at a residential college, which were known as Master's Teas when I had been a student and were advertised in the Yale Daily News so not just undergraduates would know of the talks. Twenty-five or so years later, a non-academic clerical employee at Berkeley College wrote to me that emails to the Yale College students suffice to get the word out to the right people. In perhaps what might be called juridical justice, undergraduate students complained about not being able to get into the law library at the law school. 

Such inner-insularity has been Yale's ongoing original sin. Of course, the "bait and switch," which is not, by the way, conducive to fundraising (just saying), and the faculty's culture being averse to auditing even by visiting scholars (hence no collegial courtasy, which can go both ways in terms of not using their respective books as sources), is admittedly a mere ripple compared with what Pennington and Crummell had to contend with in not even being permitted to speak in classes and check out books while they audited courses for two years respectively at Yale's theological seminary (since known as a divinity school as if it were primarily academic, and thus fully part of Yale). Nonetheless, both the splash and the ripple come from the same stone: the callous emotional instinctual urge heightened by dis-ease to treat insiders as outsiders. 

When I was an alumni scholar in residence with a Yale (library) ID, I was treated much too often as if I were an outsider. Unfortunately, I felt the blunt of the smacks of conceit and rudeness that is generally assumed societally to be associated with the elite universities in America. For example, even though I had written books on the E.U. and had even been a section instructor of a course on the E.U. at Yale, I still could not attend the Yale College dean's talk with the prime minister of Greece because alumni even with a Yale library ID (district from a mere card) could not attend. That any of the university's non-academic employees,  such as administrative assistants (secretaries) could do so was humiliating. This was good to know, however, in case Yale's development office should ever call me for a donation. "Why not ask employees rather than me; after all, they are more important, " I  might quip.

If alumni who registered at the library to do academic work and audit courses were not “members of the Yale community,” the root of the inner-insularity wherein some insiders are relagated as outsiders may be the presence of a pathology of exaggerating otherness in order to feel the pleasure of power or superiority. Distanciation can become a fixation for people whose sense of insecurity demands that even certain classes of insiders be designated as outsiders. 

To allow people to be visitors, especially if they are alumni, and yet be a bad host is not worthy of the esteem that a prestigious university like Yale enjoys societally and even internationally. Yale had been a very bad host in this respect to Pennington and Crummell.

So even though Yale’s President Salovey solemnly apologized on behalf of the Yale Corporation on September 14, 2023 to the two Black men and gave them honorary masters degrees even though they had long since died, I submit that the convenient atonement did not result in redemption for the university, for its dominant coalition’s mentality still clashed with the counter-intuitive religious saying that many of the first are last and the last may be the first to enter the Kingdom of God. At Yale, many who presumed to be the highest of the insiders were actually farther from what a university of excellence should stand for than were even the alumni on a fixed-term-residency basis whom such vaulted insiders labeled as outsiders. For to voluntarily engage full-time in unpaid and non-degreed study for the sheer love of knowledge should be highly valued at a university of academic excellence rather than excluded from campus events and classes in a pathologically-exclusionary culture of arrogance on stilts.  

Atonement for past misdeeds does not necessarily convey redemption if the root of the sin—a sadistic pleasure in excluding as outsiders even insiders—continues. A Christian at Yale’s theological seminary (aka divinity school), who in resentment or personal insecurity pushes a category of insiders into being outsiders profits nothing from believing in the atoning sacrifice that Jesus makes on the Cross for humanity. For, to paraphrase Paul, faith without love is nugatory. Faith with arrogance and hypocrisy goes into negative territory, otherwise known as hell, even though the sinners are completely oblivious to their own inner depravity and sin. To retort that such things are fixed in human nature denies the fact that people can welcome visitors rather than use them as scapegoats. It is especially rich when a seminary’s administration engages in hypocrisy, and it should be noted that a divinity school’s alumni are not generally so rich that the administrators can afford to offend us when we visit. Two degrees of separation away, and congruent with Jesus’ preachments, generously welcoming alumni can pay real dividends. God’s Gold cannot be very well be gained by means of the inhospitality of exclusivism.

It was convenient for Yale’s trustees to give honorary degrees to two visitors who had long since died; it is much less convenient to come to terms not with the original sin, but with the arrogant and petty distinctions that were very much alive and well almost 200 years later. For during my visit, I had to endure pretentious non-academic employees inflict their opinions on me that alumni even who have registered for library access at Sterling Library are not “members of the Yale community.”

Michelle Buckholz, a non-academic Yale employee, made the exclusion of alumni on doing research at Yale's libraries clear when she told me on the phone that I had to pay $15 for lunch in Commons (a university restaurant), while Yale students, faculty and even non-academic employees only had to pay $11. I could not prepay, and I had to pay tax as I did not have an affiliation that would have entitled me to not having to pay tax. It is odd that non-academic employees didn't have to pay tax, whereas alumni at Yale for academic purposes did. It is also strange, or suspicious, that  tax on $11 was $4 in a state whose tax on food was less than 8 percent (so tax on $11 would make the total $11.76 rather than $15). Bucky wasn't telling me the whole truth. Even if Yale benefitted from people paying in advance, the university could have put $11 plus tax on the cards used for guests who were sponsored by departments (and thus tax-exempt). Bucky wasn't interested in my idea, for she bristly added insult to injury by cutting me off in mid-sentence because a student was there. It was clear to me that non-academic staff at Yale tend to view alumni as non-members of Yale, and thus as legitimately subject to exclusionary power-trips. With a pin-head mentality that focuses exclusively on the Yale ID card, Yale's non-academic employees in "profit-centers" like dining services are not the best when it comes to business, for I did not buy lunch at Commons (the university lunch hall) again. In business terms, the all-to-common rudeness Americam retail business generally translates at Yale's Commons into zero revenue from me after that.

Before Bucky, Pamela Greene, another non-academic Yale employee, had arrogantly and incorrectly informed me after I had written to her to request to be put on the email list for a series of lunchtime talks in social science, that alumni, even if on campus for a term or two, are not “members of the Yale community.” 

Days later, at the university event morbidly conferring degrees on the dead (Pennington and Crummell), I criticized Greene’s arrogance and the accuracy of her statement after introducing myself to Barbara Sabia, Senior Director of Alumni Engagement and Development of Yale’s divinity school. Sabia, another non-academic employee, said, “Well, you’re not a student, faculty, or staff, so you’re really not a member of the Yale community.” She had a strange way of engaging with alumni if she had any notion of how universities can maximize monetary donations from alumni (the school’s development coordinator was quietly seated just behind her, doubtlessly not wanting to interject). I even showed Sabia my Yale library ID, but it made no difference and anyway by then she had decided not to converse with me. Yet another interesting approach to engaging with alumni, given the interest in fundraising that an alumni-engagement director would be expected to have. 

An elite university should be smarter than Yale. You can return to campus to work on academic projects, and you can donate to Yale, but we don’t trust you enough to give you access to the classroom buildings that are locked even on school days, and you’ll have to pay more if you want to check out books and eat in the university lunchroom, and you won’t be able to access the readings online or speak in class if you audit a class. What message does that send besides ineptitude (at least in regard to maximizing alumni donations) and even passive-aggression, pettiness and distrust?

A university that invests in its alumni doubtless recoups financial returns, whereas a university that hems and haws regarding what alumni on campus get and can’t get suffers a want of intimacy and affection in return. A university administration in line with its development office, says to alumni willing to return to work on academic projects:

You’re sacrificing a lot in moving back to New Haven, and you should be lauded cum laud for suspending a lucrative career or a serene retirement, so your alma mater is not going to stand in your way while you’re on campus. You can have access to the stacks in Sterling Library if you register for access, and you can check books out too. You can even audit classes and if you do that, you’ll have access to the online course readings and even the buildings where the classes meet. Because you’ll be doing academic work on a sustained and nonpermanent basis, we won’t charge you. Yale has a huge endowment; there is no excuse for Yale being petty or greedy. Having studied hard as a student and being willing to do so again without the prestige of another Yale degree, you deserve to have unfettered access on campus. Besides, if you make a splash from your additional academic study, Yale benefits too! Finally, please tell us if any of our faculty or non-academic employees are rude or otherwise arrogant with respect to you when are on campus. If any such employees try to nickel and dime you as if you have no affiliation or otherwise imply that you are the general public, please report those employees, for they are the ones who should be returned to the general public for employment purposes. 

Unfortunately, as of 2023, this was not the mentality of Yale. It is a pity that such potential can be squandered by small minds and an irony that such minds can populate even an elite university. It seems that that was the case even at Yale’s seminary in the nineteenth century, for even though Pennington and Crummell were barred by law from matriculating, Yale did not have to mussel the academic visitors and bar them from checking out books. In his book, People of the Lie, M. Scott Peck posits that the defense mechanism of malignant narcissism surrounds a sense of emptiness. This outer shell and inner core can explain the excessive exclusivism within Yale has existed for centuries. Nietzsche contrasts the self-confidence and innate generocity of the strong from the pettiness and cruelty of the weak. Yale could have capitalized on its resources, which included its $39 billion endowment in 2023, to draw on alumni as assets and not just alumni assets. Alumni could contribute so much on campus were we made to feel welcome rather than outsiders. Even in the classroom, young students could benefit from the educated wisdom of alumni who are willing (and encouraged rather than discouraged) from doing the reading and participating in class discussions (with the students doing the bulk of the talking, of course). A university could be utterly transformed were it to capitalize on the people whom it has educated rather than merely seek monetary donations, and these former would reinforce the latter. Only a strong university has the self-confidence, as Nietzsche wrote in Thus Saith Zarathustra, to not be bothered by giving even to "parasites." Alumni and visiting scholars can be so much more than parisites. A university can be utterly transformed. 

Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders: The Case of Paterno at Penn State University

In January 2011, the illustrious football coach at Penn State University, Joe Paterno, learned that prosecutors were investigating his longstanding assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, for sexually assaulting young boys in the football team’s locker room. Paterno even testified before a grand jury on the matter that month. He had been informed of the rapes back in 1998, yet he had kept the pedophile on even though additional boys would be at risk in doing so. 

That same month—January 2011—Paterno also began negotiating to amend his contract that would not expire until the end of 2012. By August 2011, Paterno and the president of Penn State reached an agreement in spite of the fact that both were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation. “Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.” 

The university’s board was kept in the dark. Directors who raised questions were “quickly shut down.” In the end, the board gave the family virtually everything it wanted. The board even threw in free use of specialized hydrotherapy message equipment at the university for Paterno’s wife. In other words, Paterno (and his surviving family, following his death in January 2012) got an even better deal as the scandal came to include Paterno himself.

 Joe Paterno, head football coach at Penn State, viewed by a student as "Pa" in PA        Matt Rourke/AP

The full essay is at "Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders."

The University of California: University Governance Gets an “F” on Trust

As part of the government’s 2017 audit of the University of California’s president’s office, California’s auditor, Elaine Howle, sent surveys to administrators at the university’s 10 campuses. The president’s staff directed administrators at the Santa Cruz, San Diego, and Irvine campuses to remove criticism of the office and give higher performance ratings in key areas. The interference was blatant, as it included even a systemwide conference call. As a result, Howle disregarded all of the results as tainted. The audit also uncovered $175 million in undisclosed reserves being held by the president’s office. Janet Napolitano, the U.C. president and former head of the U.S. Homeland Security Department, had betrayed the trust vested in her. The ineptitude likely ran higher, and lower. That is to say, the university’s governance itself was culpable.

For an office with a $686 million budget (the entire university’s budget being $31.5 billion in 2017) and nearly 1,700 employees to betray the trust of the university’s board of regents, the Government of California, and the general public is, as Assemblyman Phil Ting said, “outrageous and unbelievable.”[1] Ting compared the interference to a student who is failing “and magically the professor changes the grade and passes the student.”[2] In fact, the duplicity went beyond Napolitano’s office, for Howle had directed the administrators at the campuses to keep the surveys confidential and yet one UCSF administrator felt entitled to inform Napolitano’s staffers, who in turn began directing administrators on how to respond to the surveys. George Blumenthal, chancellor of the Santa Cruz campus, sent an email to his staff noting that the president’s office was not happy with a long paragraph, so he added, “I suggest you remove the paragraph and submit it.”[3] That a spokeswoman for the president noted that the chancellors had “not been shy in offering opposing views” to that of the president can thus be taken as yet another attempt to mislead.[4]

The irony is that California’s tax-payers had been funding “profligate” salaries of university administrators even as funding cuts mandated by the legislature had hit other areas of the university.[5] For their part, faculty members were not surprised—faculty leaders noted that cynicism had crept in for years as the university governance had increasingly sidelined their voices.[6] Considering both the healthy slush fund and the efforts to manipulate the audit’s survey, as well as the sordid reputation of the university’s administration among the ranks of faculty, the conclusion may be that the university’s board of regents had failed to provide adequate oversight. In other words, the weak link may actually run higher than into the president’s office.

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1. Nanette Asimov, “3 UC Campuses Change Responses in State Auditor’s Survey,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 10, 2017.

2.  Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Mike McPhate, “California Today: A Cloud Over the University of California,” The New York Times, May 11, 2017.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

Marginal Colleges as Disingenuous: Distinguishing Vocational and Educational as a Solution

In my hometown, a local college decided to become a university. Not that the college was expanding; the underlying motivation was tuition money from foreign students whose governments required that aid be given only to universities. So overnight, departments became colleges. The underlying mentality, I submit, is that of forsaking what an institution is and so claiming to be something it’s not in order to get more money. In short, the underlying mentality is more, more, more, even if this means being something an institution is not. The change comes off as pretentious and greedy. The mentality is also in the mix when for-profit colleges take advantage of the U.S. student-loan program to the extent that they become financially dependent on the subsidized loans. Furthermore, some for-profits turn non-profit as a way to avoid oversight without losing the financial benefits of being for-profit. The trend points to an increasing decadence in American higher-education. The good news is that between 2011 and 2016, the enrollments at the major non-profit schools dropped by more than half; the “pullback came as the government clamped down on aggressive recruiting practices and stricter policies intended to ensure that schools are preparing students for gainful employment.”[1] Even the assumption that the purpose of a college is to train students for jobs rather than educate to make students knowledgeable. I suspect that the latter mission ironically makes for better hires among graduates.

Sadly, it is not uncommon for new students to decide on a major based on the sort of job they want after they graduate. This orientation willows down education artificially to that which fits with employer needs. While such a concern has a place in the professional schools, it does not fit higher education itself. Part of the problem may be that jobs-oriented majors (and schools) are housed alongside other majors (and schools) in American universities. In the E.U., the cleft is more pronounced institutionally. The American case risks a reductionism of higher education to vocationalism. Ideally, criteria appropriate to each should have their proper place at the American universities such that like fits with like. Whereas the practice of public accounting should have a place in the accounting major of a business school, such vocational concerns should not extend to majors in the humanities, for instance; a student doesn’t major in classics because getting prepared for a job is the motive. The bottom-line may be a lack of faith in higher education itself as a social good, including being of value to students in terms of knowledge as an end in itself.

In a clear decision on August 11, 2016, for example, the U.S. Department of Education took aim at the sordid mentality in denying a request by the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, a Utah-based college, to convert to nonprofit status for financial-aid purposes. Because board chairman Carl Barney was the main financial beneficiary of the college, the college was private rather than non-profit. The college would continue to face the higher regulatory scrutiny that goes with being a for-profit college; such a college “cannot derive more that 90% of its revenue from Title IV federal student-aid funds.”[2]

That a mentality of “wanting it both ways” was at least part of what the government was going after is clear from the Education Secretary’s comments. John King said, “This should send a clear message to anyone who things converting to nonprofit status is a way to avoid oversight while hanging onto the financial benefits: Don’t waste your time.”[3] That the college’s chief executive, Eric Juhlin, characterized the government’s decision as “arbitrary, capricious and unlawful” suggests that the administration did not get the message.[4] It would seem that wanting to keep the proverbial cake and yet eat it too is a sordid mentality that resists self-awareness even though it reduces credibility and thus has real costs. I submit that such a mentality can harm higher education more generally because corners tend to be cut even as the cutters remain in denial.

Fortunately, a federal crackdown on for-profit colleges had been taking place, such that in early September, 2016, ITT Technical Institute “abruptly closes more than 130 campuses, forcing more than 40,000 students . . . to begin looking for another school.”[5] The U.S. Government had banned the college from enrolling new students receiving federal aid. In short, the college had been too oriented to student loans and not enough oriented to training its students such that they could find employment. Put another way, ITT, and Corinthian Colleges, which faced liquidation a few months before, paid scant attention to their respective missions because making more money was the true mission.

Perhaps part of the problem with for-profit colleges has to do with the conflating of vocational and educational missions at non-profit universities that sport both professional schools and colleges of liberal arts and sciences. In the E.U., vocational training is institutionalized apart from the universities. Perhaps restricting for-profit colleges in the U.S. to being vocational-training centers would provide a fit for those institutions. Student loans would not apply as they would not be colleges or universities. By extension, professional schools at the non-profit universities would stress the application (and thus knowledge) of the basic disciplines. This orientation is practiced at Yale’s professional schools, especially its divinity and law schools. Were other universities to follow suit, we could distinguish those professional schools from the for-profit training centers.  Students could go “straight knowledge” in colleges of liberal arts and science, “application of such knowledge to practical pursuits” in university professional-schools, or “training in skills” at vocational training centers.

To the for-profit “universities’” managements, I would point to the consistency between such a university being profit-oriented and the criteria being the preparation of hires in the for-profit workplace. It would make sense were such “universities” limited to the professional schools rather than having majors in the liberal arts and sciences, but the mentality is not one of self-limitation, but, rather, maximization, even if it means trying to have something both ways. 

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[1] Mellisa Korn, “Loan Curbs Shut College,” The Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2016.

[2] Melissa Korn, “U.S.: For-Profit College Can’t Become Nonprofit,” The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2016.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Korn, “Loan Curbs Shut College.”

Exclusivism Eclipses Veritas at Yale

Michael Simons, head of the cardiology department of the School of Medicine, made unwelcome sexual advances in writing to Annarita Di Lorenzo,  a researcher 18 years younger at the school in 2010. Simons wrote that he wanted to kiss the woman’s lips, and every part of her “body in every continent and city of the world.”[1] Referring to Frank Giordano, the woman’s boyfriend at the time and subsequently husband, Simon wrote that the woman was choosing the wrong man.  Simons would keep Giordano from important meetings and assignments. The relationship between the two men became so difficult that Jack Elias, the chairman of medicine, took over the direct supervision of Giordano to protect the untenured instructor from Simon.

Nevertheless, Yale’s provost, dismissed a university committee’s recommendation that Simons be permanently removed from his position in favor of an 18-month suspension. Faculty members claimed that Simons’ success in snagging $5 million annually from the U.S. Government in grants in 2012 and 2013 had been a factor, as well as the fact that the provost had been chair of the economics department, where Simons’ wife was a faculty member. The monetary element would not be lost on virtually any academic administrator at any university, but the “old boys club” sticky web of connections at the elitist Yale could mean that “outsiders” suffer considerable abuse there; the Provost’s dismissiveness of the university committee’s recommendation is but one indication of how distorted the moral compasses can be among the most powerful in the “club.”

As most Yalies undoubtedly know, incremental exclusivisms exist within Yale; the pleasure for a faculty member in being selected to a higher post and a student in being “tapped” to join one of the secret societies strangely depends in no small measure on being able to see others excluded (i.e., hurt). In other words, rather than finding the sheer opening of a door to be fulfilling, the true pleasure lies in watching the door hit others in the ass the hinges swing back.

For example, as a student at Yale, I spent an “all-nighter” going through the admissions ritual of one of the debating parties in the Yale Political Union. Once I was in, the party’s chairman suggested that I attend a party that would be on an upcoming Friday night. “The party owns a secret society,” he explained to me, “so you and all other guys in the party can join the society.” Assuming that I would be able to join the society too, I cancelled my preexisting plans and attended the party, which was in a room half way up the university’s clock tower. In actuality, only three people were tapped. They had all been officers in the party’s elite, so I quickly realized that the chairman had wanted me to attend not because I would be tapped, but, rather, in order to watch his friends being selected. The chairman subsequently lied to party-members—saying that I had misunderstood him. Whereas most party members in such a situation typically resigned with great fanfare during one of the weekly debates, I did not resign; instead, I simply had nothing to do with the party or its little cadre of officers. To this day, I am a member of a party in the Yale Political Union.

My point is that deceit used to protect the club within the club at Yale is not a rare deed. Perhaps you can grasp more fully why De Lorenzo may have felt no avenue left to her but to leave the university,  why her husband’s career was effectively stalled by a jealous faculty administrator, and why the provost dismissed the committee’s recommendation. The pyramidal exclusivism within Yale is so strong that unfairness and even outright aggression may seem justified to some.

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1. Tamar Lewin, “Handling of Sexual Harassment Case Poses Larger Questions at Yale,” The New York Times, November 1, 2014.

Decadence at Yale: Justice Thomas

For the first time since 2006, Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court spoke during oral argument on January 14, 2013. Even though a quip made by Justice Scalia prompted the stealth Justice to reply, the content is nonetheless quite revealing concerning Justice Thomas's quite understandable attitude concerning Yale Law School, one of his alma maters.

The case before the court concerned a defendant from Louisiana seeking to have his murder conviction overturned. The case involved the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. Backing Louisiana’s position that the defendant had received an adequate defense, Justice Scalia sought to extol the qualifications of the defendant’s lawyers; the Council of Louisiana had cited Yale Law School as "evidence" of the high competence of at least one of the defendant's lawyers. At that point, several people present in the room heard Justice Thomas remark, “Well, he did not have competent council, then.” Thomas was not entirely joking.

                                                                       Image source: time.com

Trying to account for Thomas's rare breach of his long-kept silence on the bench, the Wall Street Journal points to Yale’s emphasis on affirmative action as having embarrassed Clarence Thomas as a law student benefiting from the program in the 1970s. In his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, Thomas writes  of his fear back then that other students might assume he had been admitted because he is black rather than because of any of his personal accomplishments. “As a symbol of my disillusionment," he wrote in his memoir, "I peeled a 15-cent sticker off a package of cigars and stuck it on the frame of my law degree to remind myself of the mistake I’d made by going to Yale. . . . I never did change my mind about its value.” Add in the fact that he would store his Yale diploma in his basement instead of displaying it in his chambers, and his castigation of his diploma's value suddenly looks like more than just opposition to affirmative action.

Although not a law student at Yale, I did take and sit in on some law classes on account of the amount of historical political and economic thought in them. Being a Midwesterner, I was not used to the intensity of passive aggression (not to mention raw anger) especially in the law school when it came to enforcing "political correctness." Had Thomas even sneezed any contempt for affirmative action, the "sharks" would have been at him in an instant. I made a comment in a class one time in support of Scalia and Thomas on federalism only to find that a feminist law student had "retaliated" against me by telling an academic administrator that I had tripped her. The administrator, who had a law degree and thus had surely taken evidence, apparently did not need any. As a white male, I must have tripped the black female. Thank God I was not a law student at Yale! Even so, my diploma is in storage.

Source:

Jess Bravin, “Seven-Year Itch: Thomas Breaks Silence,” The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2013.